Two professors of sociology think they can explain why “Climate Deniers” are winning. But Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright start from the wrong assumption and miss the bleeding obvious: the theory was wrong, the evidence has changed, and thousands of volunteers have exposed it.

The key points

1. The money and vested interests on the pro-scare side is vastly larger, more influential, and more powerful than that on the skeptical side. Fossil fuel and conservative-think-tanks are competing against most of the world financial houses, the nuclear and renewable energy industry, large well financed green activists (WWF revenue was $700m last year), not to mention whole government departments, major political parties, universities dependent on government funding, the BBC (there is no debate), the EU, and the entire UN.

2. Despite this highly asymmetrical arrangement, the skeptics are winning simply because they’re more convincing — they have the evidence. The other team avoid debate, try to shut down discussion (only their experts count), they imply the audience is too stupid to judge for themselves, and then call everyone who disagrees rude names. The dumb punters are figuring them out. Vale free speech.

The perpetual self-feeding cycle of alarmism has it’s own momentum — Create a scare and siphon up the taxes, fees, fines, charges and donations. As a bonus, activists feel like heroes, some collect awards and tributes while they trash the tenets of reason and logic, and hail false Gods of Science (as if any authority is above question). Others gratify base desires by pouring scorn on giants of science, dismissing 40 years of top service with one tenuous association (there’s a certain kind of appeal to a certain kind of person.)

How could such poor reasoning triumph for so long in the “modern” era?

The key is that so many benefit from the status-quo once the alarm is raised. There is no need for a global conspiracy, and most of the organizations and groups named here are doing honest work with respectable intentions. The problem is not conspiratorial, its systemic. Monopoly-science is not the way to seek the truth. Monopolies don’t deliver: not in markets, religion, or government either (think “EU”). We need competition.

Once an alarmist cycle is set up, with international bureaucracies, industries, taxes, associations, and activists in place, with careers riding on the perpetual alarm, what stops it? Volunteers?

Which university or government department do skeptical scientists apply to? What grant do they apply for?

The money, power, and influence is vastly larger on the side that benefits from the alarm

On the skeptical side, Exxon chipped in all of $23 million over ten years, but it’s chump-change. The fossil fuel industry doesn’t like carbon legislation, but it’s not life or death, unlike the situation for wind and solar, which would be virtually wiped out without the subsidies provided by the scare.

Curiously, some just can’t see the vested interest of global financial houses and government bureaucrats in these policies. Andy Revkin suggests that the opposition to the alarmist juggernaut is “well coordinated” and “not contentious”. But how well coordinated are the IPCC? Which think-tank has two week long junkets for tens of thousands of people including media reps from all over the world? Not skeptics.

The money side of the equation is so lop-sided, and eggregiously dominated by pro-scare funding at every level, that skeptics can thank Dunlap-McCright for bringing it up. We’ll take your minor millions and vague allusions to “influence” and up the ante a magnitude, so to speak. Yes, let’s talk about the vested interests?

As I wrote in early 2010:

Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the “deniers”, the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed. Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil’s supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking.

The namecalling has to stop

It’s absurd self-satire when mere sociologists and journalists casually call Nobel Physics Prize winners: Deniers? These “deniers” are guys who figured out things like tunneling electrons in superconductors. Just because they won a Nobel doesn’t make them right, but wouldn’t a true investigative reporter’s curiosity pique a little as skepticism rose and rose? Isn’t there a moment when it occurs to any open mind that it might be a good idea to actually phone up a NASA astronaut who walked on the moon and has spoken out as a skeptic and ask: Why?

*No a “consensus” is not evidence of how the climate works, and nor is a map of funding, they’re “evidence” of how human society works. They make good case studies of group-think-in-action. Sociologists and journalists who make the mistake of confusing one type of evidence for the other merely help to perpetuate the alarm. The answer to planetary climate sensitivity won’t be found by following dollars.

Smear Sites

DeSmog, Exxon Secrets, Sourcewatch, 10:10, Climate Progress, etc

Media (aka rubber stamp)

…turns official press releases into “News items”
Thus a Government funded scientist’s opinion (or best guess) becomes an undebatable “fact” backed by a University or govt department. Independent scientists criticisms are ignored or called “fringe”, “extremist” and “in denial”.

Duped: the well intentioned public pay for it all.

This is one “natural” cycle where positive feedback dominates.

—————

Chart footer:

Produced by a self-taught, unfunded scientist (with help from a friend) determined not to let them get away with it. WARNING: This sociological chart has no information about the planetary climate. Use only empirical evidence to try to predict the weather.

Paul A.T. Higgins of the American Meteorological Society, who is incidentally a proponent of the AGW hypothesis, wrote in his analysis of the proposed U.S. fiscal year 2011 budget that federal dollars spent on climate change research and development totaled $15.6 billion in 2009 and $17 billion in 2010. The 2011 budget proposed a 10 percent increase over the previous year. The total annual operating revenue of groups such as Cato ($20.4 million) and AEI ($28.8 million) are paltry in comparison. Yet these are the greedy muckrakers Walsh finds so offensive, though they receive no government funding whatsoever.

ATI obtained Dr. Hansen’s Form SF 278, which is required to be filed annually, also under the Freedom of Information Act. The disclosure revealed that Dr. Hansen received between $236,000 and $1,232,500 in outside income in 2010 relating to his taxpayer-funded employment,

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Rating: 9.0/10 (38 votes cast)

Map: The Climate Change Scare Machine -- the perpetual self-feeding cycle of alarm, 9.0 out of 10 based on 38 ratings

In my experience, that means that they don’t actually have to know about anything; except how to convince businesses to use their services. That’s their KPI.

Perhaps that’s just me. My opinion has been formed by experience in dealing with such companies. And you’d better not point out that the stuff that the outside consultants did was useless and perhaps even damaging to senior management, because it make senior management look bad. The consultants always seems to have some get-out-of-jail-free card.

Consultants make their money from a confidence that they will produce a lengthy report to come to any pre-determined conclusion you want. Management get to use other people’s money to produce a report which supports their agenda. It’s a win-win, assuming you’re either a consultant or senior management. Of course, if you’re anyone else, you lose.

Jo. re your email, I pop in on a regular basis because you always have something useful to say. Your messages have to be repeated and repeated as, together with like-minded people around the world, the messages you collectively put out are having a gradual effect as more and more people are coming to realise what a scam the climate change scare really is, what the effects are and where society is being slowly led.

A thorough article which puts paid to the accusations of ‘big oil’ funding for sceptics or conspiracy theories by capitalist plotters. In fact the alarmists had nearly every corner covered apart from the truth!

It did my heart good to read about the latest Chemistry Nobel laureate:

When Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman claimed to have stumbled upon a new crystalline chemical structure that seemed to violate the laws of nature, colleagues mocked him, insulted him and exiled him from his research group.

After years in the scientific wilderness, though, he was proved right. And on Wednesday, he received the ultimate vindication: the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

The lesson?

“A good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that is sure 100 percent in what he read in the textbooks,” Shechtman said.

I wonder if the Nobel team are regretting their hastiness in awarding the IPCC and Al Gore their non-science Nobel Peace Prizes?

PS: I still don’t see numbers against the # in the top right of each comment??

Jaymez
With respect to the numbers at the top right of each Comment, if I may, could it be the browser you are using.
perhaps some feedback on who is using what Browser, and whether the numbering appears for them.

eg For me, I am using Firefox 7.0.1 and I am seeing everything as it should be, numbering reply, thumbs the lot.

After using Firefox for a number of years now, I’d never go back to any version of IE.

Steve Jobs was in end-stage liver disease (ESLD)when he received his transplant two years ago, and what I find remarkable about his medical history was that he survived the diagnosis of his neurendocrine pancreatic malignancy as long as he did.

Immunosuppressant medications needed to prevent the rejection of solid-organ transplants (such as the one Jobs had received in 2009) frequently result in the progression of pre-existing malignancies thought to be in remission, and even in the development of new cancers.

People die. I’m looking at the imminently pending prospect myself, and though I won’t try to feign casual indifference, I know that there’s damn-all I can do about it.

In response to memoryvault, I remember when adenosine injection first came into clinical use for the management of supraventricular tachycardias, and from my perspective as the treating physician it’s commonly been “freaky” as hell.

I always know when a new thread has begun because i stop getting jonova emails (one of the benefits of no Dr Smith) and no i dont get numbers either i am using IE7.something although there is a fire wall bigger than Ben Hur between us. I will look at Jo’s site tonight to see if the numbers work.

Anyway my reason for posting was to MV who i cannot reply directly to because he and TUCCI78 do not have reply buttons (is this normal)my question was MV did you see the light?

Crakar24
WordPress has a similar Comments function to this here, minus the numbering, colouring, etc, just a basic comments area.

It also has the ‘reply’ to comments function as well.

However, after a certain number of replies to replies, the reply function stops.
I have found that if you want to keep it going, then just reply to the last comment that did have that reply function showing.

What pseudo sceptic hysteria “Isn’t there a moment when it occurs to any open mind that it might be a good idea to actually phone up a NASA astronaut who walked on the moon and has spoken out as a skeptic and ask: Why?” Who cares – what would an astronaut fly-boy know. Very poor logic. If you think you’re Galileo – you’re having yourself on.

Andrew, normally I would agree with you, though your logic doesn’t seem to stop climate alarmists from caring what Al Gore, or Tim Flannery (for instance) think about climate science. However when the Award-Winning, moon-walking NASA Astronaut and well regarded Geologist Jack Schmitt, then we should have some interest in what he has to say. Here is what was written back in 2009:

Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, formerly of the Norwegian Geological Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission, has received numerous awards in his career including the Space Center Superior Achievement Award and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Schmitt, a member of the Geological Society of America, American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, rejected man-made climate change concerns in 2008.

“The ‘global warming scare’ is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society’s activities,” Schmitt wrote on November 17, 2008.

“As a geologist, I love Earth observations. But it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a “consensus” that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. ‘Consensus,’ as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science,” Schmitt explained.

So, Andrew, you pick one sentence out of a long post and take issue with that. What about the rest.
1. Do you deny the enormous amount of money expended to propagate the CO2 scare campaign, and that it dwarfs any funding to sceptics, thereby rendering the argument that skeptics are well funded totally spurious?
2. Just how do you propose said organisations/scientists/NGOs/ Governments could possibly change their alarmist meme, should the climate subsequently prove insensitive to CO2 and global temperatures decline, without shaming themselves and costing themselves political capital/scientific reputation/ideological credence? Painted themselves into a corner, don’t you think?
3. Just precisely who has really propagated the hysteria here? The warmistas have told tall tales of massive sea level rise inundating the lands, rivers running dry, poles melting, polar bears dying, glaciers shrinking, dogs and cats living together……. Oh the humanity! I don’t think our Jo could possibly compete with the “sky is falling” brigade in that regard.
4. And just by the by…. Galileo would almost certainly be a skeptic in the current debate were he alive today, iron clad guaranteed. He would not have been persuaded by the emotional claptrap of the great scientific minds like Al Gore, Tim Flannery, Stephan Lewandowsky, Hansen, Mann et al. He would rightly have said, Where’s your proof, and the flimsy circular logic that passes for climate science would have impressed him not one jot.

Your comment on Galileo is interesting. He was a scientific realist who believed empirical evidence was related to a physical reality. That’s what made empiricism vital to science. The prevailing science of his day, which he opposed, was based in instrumentalism in which the physical reality was not important but rather the various paradigms or theories and the elegance of their mathematical solutions.

Of course Copernicus was the catalyst for the blossoming of realism. The incomparable Newton and most other scientists of that enormously productive period were scientific realists. These scientists by their evolving scientific discoveries set the stage for the modern industrial and technological age.

One wonders whether the alarmist climate scientists who, perhaps unwittingly, seem to have deserted the empirical nature of scientific realism are simply instrumentalists in the pre-Galileo mold. Their dependence on mathematical modeling would seem to indicate they get their kicks out of solving their own climate paradigm. A paradigm which certainly seems to bear little relationship to the realism of Galileo and Newton and even of Earth’s climate system.

Jo I think there is an issue with ‘Likes’ (sorry if someone else has already mentioned it). The ‘like’ counter ticked over when I ‘like’ a comment, but then drops that ‘like’ when I leave the page. I can ‘re-like’ that comment again showing the system didn’t record my first ‘like’.

In a speech in London overnight the opposition spokesman on communications urged “long-term thinking and leadership” to compete with China in fields such as climate change.

Malcolm must be delusional to suggest that China is trying to move to the forefront in low-carbon technologies as a matter of national strategy. China is merely manufacturing the products that the gullible west believes will fix what it thinks is a man made problem.

Last week, Mr Clark had a court victory as one of the nine “pale-skinned” Aboriginal people who brought a successful racial discrimination action against Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt. Mr Clark, the last chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission before it was disbanded by the Howard government, wore a possum skin coat to the Federal Court for the decision. But in a community coup on Monday, Mr Clark was suspended from his long-held position as chief executive of the Framlingham Aboriginal Trust.

and last but far from least we lost Steve Jobs who benchmarked communications today. Without Steve’s contribution we would not have the capability to keep people like Mann, Malcolm and Clarke accountable.

A reasonable observer might suggest that lot more than climate science is coming unstuck and not before time.

Well done Jo! You may have missed some of the oil & gas companies. Shell, BP & Mobil had coal mine assets in Australia (and other countries such as Indonesia) but burnt their fingers and sold out. They are resentful and want to close the coal industry. Shell and BP have been backing some of the green groups. Origin Energy (my superfund is a share holder) has investments in wind and geothermal (which is making a big loss) but mainly in gas exploration, distribution, use in power stations (in Qld & SA)and soon export of LCSG at Gladstone Qld. Origin is a strong supporter of the concept that Natural Gas & CSG as a clean fuel when its geenhouse gas emission is actually higher than coal for the same net energy conversion -see http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2011/07/natural-gas-more-polluting-than-coal-only-according-to-the-ipcc-a-note-from-cementafriend/. I have suggested to the parliamentry enquiry on the so called “Clean Energy” Act or what it really is “Carbon Dioxide Tax” Act that wrong technical information in the Act will make it open to legal challenge which I hope will be done by some coal companies and primary producer organisations.

Jo, the first thing I noticed about your diagram in comparison to the Climate Denial Machine diagram is that at least in yours the meaning of the arrows is consistent and they are more specific than a vague nameless connection.

In the CDM diagram some of their lines didn’t even have arrowheads. It was just sloppy, like they weren’t even trying.

Could it be that the reason that evidence against global warming has held no sway is not because we are fighting against big money, but because we are fighting against an idea. How deep into the alarmist dream world dare we go?
Is the Club Of Rome’s Limits to Growth the original Inception?
Is the myth of a fragile planet pulling the strings while scepticism is locked in Limbo?
Though the time compression works the opposite way to the movie; Twenty years of reality is just a few hours work at the 3rd level of the scam world.

Every arrow (bar one) in that diagram is supported by somebody’s job. People who work in organisations devoted to morally contentious activities have to face this dilemma every day. Their job pays the bills, but they have to remain studiously ignorant of the downstream effect if they want to show up to work without a nervous breakdown. I think you have implicitly made the argument that greed and ignorance keep this juggernaut running.
But how many good people in this juggernaut know it and are doing nothing about it?

They tell us that the fact Australia’s CO2 emissions are 1.4% of world emissions is not a good enough excuse to do nothing about emission reduction. The next time a person at JP Morgan is asked to authorise a payment to Climate Progress, are they going to say No because the fact it is only 0.001% of a $142,000,000,000 scam is not an excuse for doing nothing?
Nope.

Unfortunately many of those protests are against capitalism with the
protesters wanting more government involvement to take care of those nasty, greedy corporations.

You know, the nasty greedy corporations (and banks) that would have failed completely under a capitalistic free-market model where they used their own money and suffered the consequences of the risks they chose to take with that money.

Instead we have corporatism in which the government back up and supports these banks and businesses with the taxpayers money. Not much reason to be careful of the risks one takes when the money is being handed to them by the government and if things go belly up they just go back to the government teat and ask for more.

The reason we are in the mess we are in here in the states is because of government involvement, more (which is what the protesters seem to feel is needed) is not going to make things better.

They are protesting what the government and media has indoctrinated them to believe is the “cause” of our problems. But they are focusing all their anger in the wrong direction as was intended.

Robert, You are so right. I have read, but can not now find the site, that the Democratic party and george Soros are behind the protests. The AIM is to get justification for more regulation which firther increase the linkj between the banking corporations and the government.

Instead we have corporatism in which the government back up and supports these banks and businesses with the taxpayers money.

In 1953, educator Frank Chodorov characterized this as “Rotarian socialism.”

A friend of mine some decades ago typified its rallying cry as something like: “Three cheers for free enterprise, and keep them tariffs, quotas, subsidies, set-asides, and sweetheart deals a-coming!”

Today we add bailouts, massive Solyndra-style loan guarantees, EPA regulations, and overt federal takeovers of failing corporations in order to preserve the unions which had driven them into bankruptcy.

From the more serious academic side, it’s actually the mercantilist American System rammed up the national cloaca by Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, and every Red Faction slimeball since Abraham Lincoln.

The phrase “useful fools” comes to mind and these kids are perfect examples of why I choose not to have children. You can only teach them so much wile “society” attempts to undermine you at every turn. I couldn’t bear seeing my children leave my home as intelligent human beings only to return as idiots.

The real question sociologists will be studying for years to come is: how was an exaggerated scare, based on so little evidence, poor reasoning and petty namecalling, kept alive for two whole decades AND FOOLED OTHERWISE INTELLIGENT PEOPLE INTO WRITING BLANK CHEQUES FOR IT?

I don’t believe that it is the intelligent people who are writing cheques for it. Some famous individuals are certainly writing cheques – Bono, for example – but being famous does not mean you are necessarily intelligent.

Intelligent people tend to read well, and they therefore spot all of the equivocal words that PR wonks put in articles to give themselves (and their clients) a way out, if it all goes to custard. People who can read well, and tend to be intelligent, notice such things and are therefore sceptical about what is written. Once they get that far, there are no cheques, blank or otherwise.

The positive spin the MSM put on CO2 reduction is also a problem. The UK Dept of Energy & Climate Change show in recently released figures –

“That Sounthorpe area of the UK reduced their Carbon emissions by 2,728 kilotonnes between 2008 and 2009 – which is a drop of 26%”

Ms. Liz Redfern a councillor of North Linconshire Council said the following: (Ms. Liz Redfern is not related to Bob Brown)

“Our target for this period was a cut of 12%, so we are well above that and well above the national average of 15%. The reduction puts North Lincolnshire in the top 25 most improved areas across the country, but we still have a lot more to do to meet targets of cutting CO2 emissions by 50% by 2025.”

What wonderful news for the globe! How do they measure the CO2 concentrations at North Linconshire? By the income from the CO2 Tax – thats how and this gives them the figures – no science here! Measure ppm – Nah! we’ll base this on PR SPIN and dollars!

What wasn’t reported was the massive reduction in steel manufacturing in the whole area and the output at all steel works have been down – contributing to the CO2 reduction! The BIGGEST polluters aren’t paying so much anymore because all industry is closing! Refer artile in Steel Guru http://steelguru.com/search/index.html#228020 plus that TATA got paid to close its other steel furnace because it reduced its Carbon output.

Mr Turn BullShi..t in the UK at present stating China is leading the world in CO2 reduction must be on a different timestream of planet Earth! North Linconshire is leading the world in CO2 reduction – just ask the 10,000 plus recently unemployed that it’s now getting cooler thanks to them!

Science doesn’t advance through agreement – consensus isn’t truth, it’s maintaining the status quo, it’s “not rocking the boat”. “97%of scientists agree” – I’d be worried if 97% of scientists agreed on almost any topic – that would leave just 3% who dissent, and history shows that it’s the dissenters (sceptics) who drive science forward, even if they’re wrong. Dissenters often expose flaws and weaknesses in established theories, or simply stir the discussion, forcing proponents of a theory to defend and sometimes re-analyse their data or conclusions. A haughty and unreasoned defence often leads to others becoming sceptical and questioning a conclusion. Many great scientists have said (in various ways) that scepticism is the life-blood of science.

I’m sceptical – of everything I read, see and hear on the internet, television and news media in general. I’m sceptical of what I read here – what else should I be? What I read is opinion laced with a few facts, which may or may not be “truth”, whatever that is. The reason I spend any time here, and occasionally express my opinion, is not because visitors here are of like mind, but because in common with many sceptical blogs, they are willing to listen to diverse opinions, and to argue their case, and maybe, just once in a while. change their minds, even if only a little

You don’t see much argument on “warmist” blogs, there’s a lot of reinforcing of views, and mutual back-slapping. That’s not healthy, and doesn’t even advance their point of view, let alone settle anything. The thought process needs stimulus, the occasional shock, not reinforcement.

Nothing in the climate debate is “settled”. What we know about the climate, and what we know we don’t know, is vastly exceeded by what we don’t know we don’t know. Untangle that if you can – it just means we’re largely ignorant about the drivers and mechanisms, their scale and often direction. Some scientists openly admit this, and I applaud them. Others do not – they’re destined to be relegated to the appendix to history, and not inclusion in one of its chapters. A few will be included in the “rogue’s gallery” – nominees on a postcard please to…

I confess, I cannot understand all the alarmism. A visitor from another planet would conclude that little has changed in our climate. An increase of 0.7°C over a century means we’re all gonna die? My room thermostat can’t achieve that level of stability. A couple of degrees over the next century would probably make things better for most, if not all of us. A bit more CO2 will be a good thing – unbeknown to most alarmists (some scientists too, it seems), CO2 is the only source of carbon for plants, and is already improving crop yields. Those crops also make do with less water and nutrients, as many studies have shown.

As the title of this post says, it’s a “self-feeding cycle of alarm”, and the force on the pedals is money and power.

Here’s how you get 97%: Have some college students do a study, in which they send out a loaded-question-naire to 1 or 2 thousand scientists. Pick through the responses, deciding who is qualified to answer. Choose your favourite 79. Note that 77 of your picks believe mankind has some effect on temperature globally. Divide 77 by 79, and multiply by 100%, round to the nearest integer.

Barnum’s most famous scam was a handsomely lettered sign reading “This way—Exeunt!”. Eager punters rushed to see the fabulous Exeunt, only to find themselves outside the tent. “Exeunt” means exit (as in stage directions), and it was Barnum’s way of clearing the tent to make way for more dollar-clutching punters. Unfortunately I can see no immediate “exeunt” from the alarmism that”s prevalent, just a slow return to something approaching common sense.

I think you’re right – your comment stirred a dim, almost forgotten memory (Oh, that AGW alarmism was such!) from my childhood (first childhood, that is) days. I was repeating what I read on the ‘net recently – an unreliable source of information IMHO. “Egress” is far more logical and far more likely.

China builds more plants to produce refrigerants so they can be paid to close them. Australia assures China and other buyers that they can buy coal without penalty and cite how woderful the economy is with massive sales of fossil fuels. China is buying assetts all over the world focusing on minerals and fuel. China is lending money to bail out Europe and USA but is still classed as a lesser developed country and as such must be paid to reduce so called carbon pollution. Australia has signed up to give the United Nations climate fund money to give away. Australia’s carbon tax will inclue this so when you buy that cheap gadget or food or clothing made in China remember Australia has helped them destroy made in Australia. Bankers, left wing governments, green movements, stockbrokers love commodities becasue they trade with them and get fees and profits. Carbon dioxide is for them just another commodity. Scientist funding depends on who pays the bill. Dont get it right and the funds stop. Funny how those who prove alarmists wrong are attacked. Question everything until there is no doubt whatsoever. Whenever my local weather bureau cant get the weather forecast right 3 days away i wonder how they are so positive that they are right 100 years from now, Yeah, makes ya think eh?

Just to give you the gist. they claim in effect that all those nasty little weather forecasting errors cancel out, and they’re left with the Big Picture, the Trends, with implied understanding of what drives them. And the benefit that they can’t be verified in advance, so by the Precautionary Principle, we’re obliged to pretend their “projections” are correct, and devote the world’s economy to curbing CO2.

” I think the real issue with this (AGW) is that no one wants to know because then “everyone” is wrong. ”

The problem with the none existent “debate” of AGW is that there are at present only two versions of the same side.
The real debate should be with the other side, the side that actually questions the principles of AGW.
So far, the official “other side” has only been quibbling the figures of AGW, that’s why it is a dead end “debate”.
Sure, you will expose fraud, but that ain’t enough when it is a false science you are dealing with.
The world is not flat, it is not a black body.
The world is an oblate spheroid, and a grey body to boot.

AGW was always way, way, way too simple an approach, based upon black body assumptions.
(ie, If In = Out or else boom is not a black body assumption – then what is it….)
Black body “physics”, and “maths” does not exist in the reality we live in.
Why then, do we treat a grey body and reality as if it is a black body???????????

BECAUSE it is politically convenient, that’s why.
Just like the world being flat was once politically convenient.
History repeats itself, when we let it.

H. L. Mencken said it best,
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken.

AND, I would add that,
The hobgoblins have to be imaginary, so that,
“they” can offer their solutions, not THE solutions.

The motivation for AGW is, was, and will continue to be
the political need for an imaginary hobgoblin to tax and control us with.
Companies merely follow the political lead.

That explanation is far downstream from the real cause: Dogma in science–the dogma that the fundamental theories of today are established facts. Even climate consensus skeptics don’t realize it is just as bad throughout the earth and life sciences. The problem is that you can’t correct climate science without first showing where it fails; there are too many bringing forth alternative theories, when everyone first needs to agree on the obvious errors in consensus theory (in climate, that means the greenhouse effect hypothesis, and the radiation transfer theory that has thoughtlessly defined a stable climate system as just the opposite, one balanced on a knife edge, that can be overwhelmed by 0.04% of a gas necessary for all the life on Earth). The earth and life sciences are riddled with fundamental errors, precisely due to the dogmatic, rather than evidential, nature of their underpinning assumptions. It is all speculation piled upon unsupported assumptions, in the very foundations where they remain unquestioned, and an essentially religious belief (i.e., a hotly defensive, emotionally biased belief, inculcated from youth in every school) is the life’s blood that sustains the illusion throughout society, and at the highest levels of authority and responsibility. I see people criticising the climate consensus on the basis of the Milankovitch theory, not realizing the latter is just as wrong-headed as the former. I see skeptics calling critics of evolution theory names, and dismissing them, without realizing that they are acting just like the defenders of “runaway climate”. The problem is incompetence in all of science today, due precisely to unquestioned belief in ideas that, fundamentally, are just as wrong-headed as those which Aristotle used to hold up the development of science for 2,000 years (and Darwin’s idea–basically just against design in the natural world–has set science on a dead end street for the last 150 years). The climate science mess is just the latest, harshest eruption of the consequences of unquestioned and unsupported dogma in the foundations of modern science. Don’t try to judge, from a position of ignorance. Be humble, and self-disciplined, and learn. That is the lesson for our time (or, more likely now, the lesson OF our time, for those who come after).

…and Darwin’s idea – basically just against design in the natural world – has set science on a dead end street for the last 150 years….

Er, WTF?

Or perhaps more appropriately “WTF’ityFF?”

If someone avows that there is purposeful “design in the natural world,” there is an obligation to present objectively verified evidence to support the contention, and thus far nobody had managed to do this.

In response to the continued vomiting up of “creationism in a cheap lab coat,” I keep wondering why there is such reluctance to discuss the less completely ineffable possibility that we’re dealing with the residua of “Super-Intelligent Purple Space Squid.”

Given what is manifest every day in the management of patients with viral diseases like HIV-1 infection (i.e., AIDS) with regard to antiretroviral drug resistance, the workings of environmental selection pressures on critters’ genetic and phenotypic characteristics are as much beyond abnegation as anything in the sciences ever gets.
–

Tucci78 – I agree with Harry Dale Huffman about much of what he says in this comment, but with the very specific exception to the idea of design in the natural world. Having had an email conversation with him on the subject, his position is not coming from any dogma of religion but from what he believes is the evidence of what he has analysed about the world around us. So he is consistent in his argument about science in general, but I also completely disagree with the idea of design in the natural world. The argument for design, whether it is for biology or geology is always based around probability and the argument goes something like “the probability of X happening by chance is one over a very, very large number”. Now I do not argue about the denominator of this fraction (I can accept their math for this), but they invariably do not calculate the numerator which is the population of events / occurrences in the universe at large that can lead to said outcome. Once you get that even larger number calculated, the “remote” possibility becomes a statistical population. Again no-one has all the answers which is why you must look at each argument on its merits, regardless of the source.

I appreciate Truthseeker‘s expatiation on Mr. Huffman‘s “design” fixation. I’m not a frequenter of this forum, and not in correspondence with Mr. Huffman, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster in all His Noodly Goodness.

Indeed. I’ve been asked by those who can’t quite get their head around evolution something like ‘if evolution is true, how can everything on earth be so different’.

My answer is always the same – if evolution isn’t true, how come we are all so similar? You can look at the skeleton of a fish, a whale, a donkey, a person, a turtle. The similarities are much more striking than the differences. If there was an intelligent designer, they sure did a lot of copy/paste.

There’s an interesting POV wrt evolution (subset of ID discussion):
The 95%+ of miraculously preserved and protected ‘non-coding junk DNA’ is actually functional. Consider what would happen if an organism happened to have some borrowed or mutated code which strongly trimmed the statistical tree of possible mutations, and kicked in under appropriate external/internal stimulus. Such an advantage would be very strongly selected for and conserved. Accumulate thousands or millions of such meta-mutation guidelines, and you end up with a rather efficient Intelligently Self-Designed operator’s manual and policy book for the genome.

I regard that sequence as not just possible, but inevitable, given the “trimming” advantage.

Perhaps the “redundant” DNA in the genome of most complex organisms is not so redundant after all. As an erstwhile intransigent atheist, I now hold the opinion that Darwin’s theory is an excellent (at least partial) explanation of some of the diversity of life on Earth, and the success or failure of certain organisms in different environments, but as an explanation of the origins of life itself, it is somewhat lacking and at the very least incomplete. Such theories should not be sacrosanct, should be constantly challenged and modified, and the propensity to view them as somehow above and beyond rational inquiry (even by questioning the involvement of some “divine” force for want of a better word, driving the order and organisation of the universe and the beings which inhabit it) stymies progressive thought rather than enabling it. I don’t believe that the theory of evolution and that of intelligent design are mutually exclusive. Both might complement one another, even though I personally don’t favour the latter belief in the form in which I have seen it argued. Having an open mind gives one a myriad of possibilities to discuss and to ponder.

I think your chart just begins to capture the amount of money promoting the consensus position and looking to tap into the revenue stream that was hoped to be created by CO2 regulation. But while the coal companies had a lot to lose, the oil companies had everything to gain. Most oil companies do not have significant oil reserves but they have large reserves of natural gas. CO2 restrictions if implemented would have caused many coal fired electricity generators to switch to natural gas. Exxon Mobile and BP would have been some of the biggest beneficiaries. It’s no wonder that BP launched it’s beyond petroleum campaign and Exxon remained silent on the sidelines of the climate change debate. Environmentalism was raising the price of their products and increasing their market share.

Big Oil knows damn well that the entire renewables push is economic nonsense, bound to fail and cause some ghastly crashes of national economies wherever aggressively pursued (Scotland, England, Spain, etc.) But in the meantime, big bucks for playing along are on offer. So, take the bucks, ride the gravy train for as long as it lasts. And, when it grinds to a halt, what will be there, waiting to power the globe again?

Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. Scientists assume that if you do not hold a doctorate and have been brainwashed to think the same, then you are stupid and should be ignored.
Not realizing we have a great many extremely intelligent people of different faiths and classes who are in different fields of study or working who have not had the opportunity or desire to be a scientist.

These scientists have influenced political policy and people want to understand what it is they are suppose to believe on blind faith and how the scientists came to their conclusions and what data gave them their conclusions.
Now they are pushing for physiological analysis on society to find out why they are not being believed in.
Not looking into their own research to find they may have screwed up.

This mindset has actually helped in people questioning ALL science and not just climate science. This then has all the other fields afraid of what the “skeptics” may find.

I have 10 years of planetary studying into many fields in order to understand this planet and found a vast number of mistakes. Trying to bring attention to these mistake only gets you ignored, no matter how correct they are to current science theories.

I second that – threading is a great improvement. The correct comment # appears on threaded replies now – in my case was it a cached style sheet? Hint to those still suffering, clear your browser cache.

Only one thing might make a further improvement – it’s not clear whether you’re replying to a comment or inserting a new one. A “Replying to comment #x.xx”, “New comment” or something similar would be more than useful, if it’s possible. The ‘phone rang just as I was about to type this, and afterwards I couldn’t recall if I’d clicked on “Reply”, so re-loaded the page to make sure of what I was doing. There’s no problem seeing what you’re doing if there are replies below yours of course.

You say that “the fossil fuel industry doesn’t like carbon legislation, but it’s not life or death”. In fact, it depends on the density of your product (and perhaps your CEO). The coal people hate it, big oil is split and gas companies love it!

Greens seldom acknowledge that the 16 largest oil companies (in terms of proven reserves) are all owned by Governments. Then there’s Exxon, which is mildly opposed, followed by Shell and BP who are cheerleaders.

Oil prices haven’t moved up much in the past 30 years, despite vastly increased demand and cartel-dominated supply. Most of the credit for this goes to the mere existence of vast tonnages of coal in many large oil markets around the world. Of course, if coal could be excluded from the equation, we’d see a very different oil-price pattern over the next 30 years.

I’m not surprised to see Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan in it because in some well known influential green NGOs, there are former ‘higher ups’ from these (and other) large banks in them.

What worries me is, given that banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan run our US Federal Reserve, they are going to win this one because hey can influence elections. And given that they already have carbon derivatives (similar to subprime derivatives) ready to go and because the cap-and-trade market has been estimated to be $20 trillion dollars a year, that is a lot of wealth that they aren’t going to miss out on.

There is something like $600 trillion dollars of derivatives created mainly from the subprime market yet the subprime market was nowhere near $20 trillion dollars a year. I wonder what the total value of carbon derivatives would be after about 8 years of them in a $20 trillion dollar a year market. I bet it would be measured in the next prefix beyond ‘quad.’

The trouble with those calcs is that whenever free to do so, the valuation of the credits heads for the basement and scrapes along whatever “floor” has been mandated. The CCX died shortly after birth, with no volume at 5¢/tonne.

If the real economics of carbon credits were to be reflected, they’d have negative worth — people would have to be paid to do “green”. Which is exactly what subsidies are for.

For your weekly dose of ABC irony, they ran a 2 hour special on the fall of Enron last week. During this 2-hour program they projected up the entire company as a bunch of crooks, thieves and liars, all on the take. While I’ll never stand in a dock and argue the case for Enron as they definitely were cooking the books, the most invective in the program was a sneering accusation that Republican lawmakers had created all the problems by deregulating the energy industry. Somehow George Bush was responsible, closely followed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, though this was more by association than actual deed.

The crowning glory in all this was the case of the deregulated Californian electricity market, which famously had outages and shortages in otherwise low demand periods which caused rolling blackouts and sky high prices. This was because the laws were so complex and misunderstood the Enron traders got the electricity generators to all ‘go down’ all at once, all the while taking massive bets on the direction of the electricity price in the derivatives markets they created for such a purpose. This is akin to a football coach not only throwing the game, but running the TAB as well. All created by clueless politicians egged on by con artists.

In all this finger pointing and accusing the documentary did, it obviously never dawned on any of them that the global carbon trading scheme would make the California electricity market manipulation look like a sly game of two-up in a side alley.

As the carbon trading market is entirely legislation created – nobody would trade them voluntarily, witness the collapse of the CCX – then all you have to do to make a fortune is take large derivative bets on the direction of the carbon price, then get your buddies in the carbon office to announce an increase, or to change the floor price (yes, there is a floor price, it will never be allowed to trade at it’s true level – zero). Like shooting ducks in a pond, you can make billions doing this. In an entirely government created and manipulated market, how ‘real’ is the pricing going to be? In a largely unregulated derivatives market sitting on top of a government created and manipulated market, how easy will it be to tweak the odds in your favor and rake in the winnings? Remember all the designs for the carbon office take the pricing of carbon certificates out of the hands of the politicians, so you can’t vote them out for putting the price too high.

Any trading program that can create a consistent edge of 1 or 2% will take in millions over time if the liquidity is deep enough.

Just like in California, you’ll have bankrupt grandmas throwing eggs in the street, but the ones with the cash will walk away with it all.

Just like in California, the clueless legislators will agree to it all because they’ve all been told that ‘it’s free market, and therefore good’ when in reality it was nothing like that at all.

Just think, in Australia in a few years time, you’ll be spending your first couple of hours of labour every Monday working for traders, lobbyists, and organised criminals in third world countries. It’s already the case that it’s Wednesday lunchtime before you get to keep any of the earnings of your honest work – eventually this will push it out to Thursday morning.

The socialists will bungle things up with state intervention, the monopolists will give them campaign money to create their monopolies, and the public will get cleaned out yet again. And the idiot socialists will point at the market failures, the manipulations, the fraud, and go ‘see, you can’t trust capitalism’.

Probably a good idea to find out ‘enviro-activists mass-emailing’ is pushing the upcoming “Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society” book mentioned in the Mother Jones magazine article. Andy Revkin mentioned it at his NY Times DotEarth blog days ago, and Time magazine did so as well.

The head snap for me about the “Denier Chart” seen in those articles was the names “Riley Dunlap” and “Aaron McCright” on the bottom of the chart. Those two are part of a group of people who have long repeated talking points from anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan, which includes Naomi Oreskes, Myanna Lahsen, Max Boykoff, the late William Freudenburg, and the late IPCC scientist Stephen Schneider.

Dunlap appears at this Feb 22, 2010 AAAS 2010 Annual Meeting Symposium (link here) with those others, a transcript of that discussion is seen at this ABC Radio link (click on the “Show Transcript” link there). Freudenburg said about AmericanThinker.com, “American Thinker…they lie” (BTW that’s where I have several articles on the smear of skeptic scientists), Schneider said about skeptics, “the idea of maintaining political consistency when the evidence changes is what I would call either closed-minded or lying“, and Oreskes had a long narrative about the exact 1991 coal industry memos that are the central bit of Ross Gelbspan’s evidence supposedly proving the ‘tobacco industry-like guilt’ of skeptic scientists.

I have multiple references to all of these characters in my mega-computer file, with the ultimate goal of trying to figure out how Gelbspan-Schneider-Lahsen specifically tie together. Each one of these people all cite Ross Gelbspan as their sole source for the proof that skeptic scientists were paid by big coal & oil to lie about AGW, and they went on to practically create an industry devoted entirely to analyzing why the rest of us are too ignorant, greedy, politically motivated, etc, to stop AGW from happening.

And as I’ve pointed out in my multiple articles, Gelbspan’s accusation is literally unsupportable.

Experimental observations that conflict with Bilderberg model of the Sun as a stable H-fusion reactor — the cornerstone of the Kissinger-Mao-Nixon-Breznov agreements — were hidden, ignored or manipulated away after 1971.

Later Professor Ninham helped Professor Stig Friberg and I use that key to explain solar eruptions and climate change in 2002 [2]:

Abrupt expulsions of magnetic fields by the Meisner effect, driven by the rotating superconducting, super-fluid of iron-rich material that surrounds the Sun’s pulsar core [1,2].

The rest of the story:

1. Neutron-emission from the core is the process that powers the Sun and other stars.

2. Neutron-decay and ejection of the decay-product (hydrogen) to interstellar space causes expansion of the universe.

3. Neutron-decay generates hydrogen that accumulates as an incandescent cloud (photosphere) before the star’s deep-seated magnetic fields eject the hydrogen into interstellar space by flares, eruptions, and the quiet solar wind.

4. Expansion of the universe is accelerating because the neutron-emission is a surface process and the surface/volume ratio is higher in fragments of massive old neutron stars than in their parents.

5. Changes in deep-seated magnetic fields are the key to understanding changes in Earth’s climate and in Earth’s magnetic poles.

I am now more concerned with returning citizen control over government than integrity to science – - – a seemingly losing battle.

1. As mentioned in the Preface to the 1999 ACS Proceedings on the “Origin of Elements in the Solar System: Implications of Post-1957 Observations”, Glenn T. Seaborg and I wanted the proceedings to “include all points of view and let history judge their validity.”

The entire book, including the Chapter by my late mentor – Professor Paul Kazuo Kuroda – is now available free, on-line to everyone:

The figure on the front cover, the Cradle of the Nuclides, is the key to understanding the energy source that powers Earth’s climate, the Sun and other ordinary stars, pulsars, the compact centers of galaxies, and the expansion of the universe. The interpretation – neutron repulsion – was published in 2001.

2. A news report on PhysOrg.com reminds us that the the United States is now totally dependent on other countries to do the tasks formerly done by American space shuttles.

Yes there is an element of truth in what you say but Oliver is pushing two aspects of this AGW problem.

1. The science; and there is a very good chance that the solar factors being highlighted are of great importance to Earth’s Temperature fluctuations, and

2. Whether or not there was a cover up involving Nixon and Brezhnev may be debatable, but there is no doubt that we face a problem now of serious Government Corruption and Complicity in the perpetuation of the Global Warming Scare or Scam.

The AGW thing is an incredible cancer in human society and if we can actually expose it and cause its’ removal we will have done something fantastic.

Given the history of the Global Financial Crisis, however, I don’t see much hope of us succeeding.

As Shakespeare said, All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

I will be 75 years old in a few days. Like you, I didn’t chose to be here. I had no idea when I started research in 1960 that my findings and the Global Warming Scam would simply confirm the validity of a warning the President Eisenhower made on 17 Jan 1961:

One can always tell when each annual exotic warmists junket (this time to Durban) is getting near. Gillard/Brown & Co. get their compliant mouthpieces at the CSIRO, ABC and other organisations and any other persons reliant on the grants gravy train, to crank up the old alarm machine and get some more scary scenarios out there. Another such one was launched in Tasmania yesterday and I can tell you, unless we change our wicked ways there’s no doubt we’re all doomed from the effects of that deadly scientifically proven (?) massive heat source and climate-changer, carbon dioxide!
I’ll comment more specifically when I cool down and get time to digest the rubbish in more detail.

Let’s just say a school, or even a whole Community, er, a Community who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are, er ….. Hepburn Wind, let’s say that they want to do the environmentally conscious thing and build a small Wind plant or solar plant for that fact, to power their school, or their Community, and they draw up plans, get all the required ducks in a row etc, raise the financing, do the Impact Studies, get all the people on side, have photo ops for the organising committees, have open days with chook raffles, you know, the whole 8.92296 Metres.

Well, once all that is done, and the tower(s) constructed, the, er, electricity generated, does not go towards powering the Community.

All the power goes to the overall power grid, and that school, Community whatever are still just connected to the grid.

The wonderful fall back for all this is that the school, community still have access to 24/7/365 power, and they can point proudly at their wind tower and say ….. “we did that. See how it powers our whole school, community.”

The point is they are still getting their power from the grid, even when the turbine(s) is (are) not even turning.

Well, when I studied electronics and communications as part of my degree, they explained all about electricity. They explained how an electron moves down a wire for 100th of a second, and then moves back again at 100th of a second. And it does this all of the time.

Now me and my mates ain’t dumb, we fellas know that the power company are just selling us an electron, and then stealing it back again so they can sell it to us again. The bloody cheek of it.

Me and my mates recon that the power companies ain’t sold us any new electricity since they put that new dam in up the road. They just keep recycling all of the old stuff. No wonder our light bulbs are going dim, with all those electrons getting worn out, just going backwards and forwards.

Rereke,
that’s so funny.
Another laugh for the day.
I get to check so may renewable power sites during the day, I’m usually rolling around the floor for most of it.
At least yours was a genuine ‘funny’ to laugh at.

I’ll bet you’re all a little intrigued now, so I hope you don’t mind if I bore you all with some electrical theory and some Maths.

Notice how Rereke said, somewhat tongue in cheek that we send one electron down the wire at 0.01 second, and then suck it back for 0.01 second, and then I said, also somewhat tongue in cheek that NZ works on 50Hz or 0.02 second.

In actual fact we are talking exactly the same thing, because for 0.01 sec the current flows in a (for want of a more easily understood explanation) positive direction, and then 0.01 in a negative direction, one full cycle.

There are 5o of these cycles each second, called hertz.

Now the Maths part.

Electrical current travels at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second.

So in actual fact it’s not one electron each 0.01 second. But one electron moving to the next atom, and one atom moving from that atom to the next atom, all at that speed of light. That flow of electrons from atom to atom is electric current flow.

So even though it is only 50 times per second, the current flow travels an enormous distance in that 0.01 second.

You turn on the switch and the current travels to the thing being powered and then back out the ‘hole in the wall’, quite a short distance when you’re talking 186,000 miles per second.

Can you see now how absolutely everything about electrical power is in figures that are astronomical, hence difficult to comprehend, and sometimes even more difficult to explain.

I think every physics teacher who ever taught has used the moving electron thing to tickle our funny bones, but until your post I had never thought about how far current actually moves in each cycle.

So; it appears that in 0.01 secs the current can reach out a distance of 3,273,600 yards or 3,003,302.75 metres or about 3,003.3 km.

What worries me about this astounding figure is that people with the scientific erudition displayed by the average Climate Scientist may become alarmed and seek to protect us from potential danger.

Can you imagine the danger posed by power pulses that reach out over 3,000 km?

Every climate scientist “knows” that the average house only has a circuit reach of about 30 metres so there could be a UN sponsored programme to increase generation frequency to say 5,000 Hz to overcome this problem.

I think it best not to let any warmers hear about this new issue that Rereke and you have exposed.

I always thought that electrons have mass — or so I was taught in college. If they do, how can they travel at the speed of light? Perhaps someone can enlighten us on the subject.

But there is another problem. Mary Johnston touches on it. If electrons are going so fast and given that all wires have some resistance, these high speed electrons are bound to generate a lot of heat. We must all be close to having our houses burned down by using electricity.

Roy,
the electrons are not moving those hugely vast distances at the speed of light.
One electron leaves one atom and moves to the next atom. An electron has left that gaining atom at the same time to move to its next atom, and so on, so the electrons are only moving from one atom to the next atom.
So the atoms remain with their same number of electrons at all times, they just swap electrons, all this happening at the speed of light, back and forth 50 times a second.

However this gives us another chance to learn something about the generation of electricity, this time that (perceived) slight difference in frequencies of the U.S. and here in Australia.

Here in Oz, we have for our power 240 Volts at 50 Hz.
In the U.S.they have 120 Volts at 60Hz.

Let’s take a typical large scale power plant, and let’s deal with just one turbine/generator complex, and while the US has large scale nuclear power plants, let’s just look at a coal fired power plant.

Coal is crushed, almost to powder to feed into the critical furnace. The immense heat produced in that furnace boils water to high temperature, high pressure steam. The steam drives a multi stage turbine, commonly three stages. The turbine drives the generator which produces the power.

Typically, the generator must revolve at the same frequency that the power is supplied at, naturally, you say, although some do rotate at lesser speeds, multiples of that frequency.

So, here in Oz, that generator rotates at an exactly regulated 50 Hz, or 50 times a second, which is 3,000 RPM.

In the U.S. that same generator must revolve at the regulated 60 Hz or 60 times a second, which is 3600 RPM.

Now comes the cruncher.

A typical large scale plant producing 2000MW+ can have between 2 and 4 generators.

One of the more recent larger generators can produce up to 1100 MW. ONE generator.

Solar Power will NEVER be able to do that, and I cannot be more equivocal than that ….. NEVER.

The best they can manage, just, is 250 MW. They hope maybe, in theory to be able to manage 400 MW in maybe 5 to 10 years, but that’s a pretty forlorn hope at this point in time.

To actually get that 250 MW, it is for a few hours at peak sunlight time, because, averaged out during the day they can manage around 150 MW, just during daylight, and so far, if they do have heat diversion, (at an immense added cost) they might be able to manage 50MW for around 15 to 18 hours, and one plant actually produced 14MW for one full 24 hour period, but even the average for that plant year round only comes in at under 15 hours. 14 MW.

The largest Wind nacelle so far is 5.5MW, so to generate the same as for ONE large scale turbine/generator, you’ll need 200 towers, and the best they can manage is a theoretical 38% (9 hours), with the best case average around 25% (6 hours)

So, again, I cannot stress enough that 2000 tons revolving at 50 (60) times per second, 24/7/365 other than down time for carefully scheduled maintenance.

THAT is why large scale new technology coal fired power is actually IMPERATIVE to introduce, because it is the only non nuclear form of large scale electrical power generation.

Until you actually realise that, then the spin of a clean energy future can gain traction.

Once you realise 2000 tons rotating at 50 times per second, then you see that renewables are totally and utterly useless.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with CO2 emissions.

It’s a physical requirement for RELIABLE large scale power production, for 24/7/365.

Conversely, take that existing source away, and you have, well, you have nothing.

The Science is wonderful to concentrate on, but the end result is not worth contemplating.

You’re preaching to the choir as the saying goes. I’ve been convinced for a long time.

When I was a teenager (don’t ask how long ago) I was lucky enough to get a tour of a new generating plant the City of Los Angeles was building. I was amazed at the size and complexity of the thing. It was natural gas fired not coal but I presume very similar generally to a coal fired plant. It’s now reached the end of its safe operating life and has been torn down. With the current madness I doubt that they replaced it with anything else.

By the way, I think generators are 4 pole, not 2, which would allow them to turn at 1,800 RPM (or 1,500). It’s a lot easier to manage a large moving mass at a slower speed and the result is the same.

Looks like the scare campaign has not reached the Qantas Board Room. I read they have just made the biggest new plane order in Aussie history ( 110 planes from Airbus). Bob Brown will be doing a “hissy fit” over these CO2 belching machines!!!

What does that say about Qantas and peak oil? Are they stupid and buy planes right up until we run out of oil or do they do the business thingy and estimate rate of return and life of the planes? If they need to fly them for twenty years to break even, do you think they are confident oil will be purchasable in twenty years time?

If you had to bet on who is more likely to be stupid, would it be Qantas, or Bob Brown?

To some, it is a PR game, and of course the AGW crowd is losing. But they are losing not because of PR, but because science will not be denied. The skeptics of history are the heros of today. Not because they were smarter, but simply because they did not forget what science was about. Mistakes will be made, and we will learn from them. But scientific truth will remain untouchable by PR campaigns and concensus.

It does not take a sociologist to understand and see the truth. It only requires the natural progression of human knowledge.

Found this absolute pearl of wisdom via Climate Depot yesterday. You’ve seriously got to take 5 minutes and read this load of alarmist crap from beginning to end. If I believed everything this Rolling Stone tome purports, then I may as well wander down to Scarborough Beach and wait for the apocalypse………lovely reading you all…..see you in the next life……

6 Oct: LA Times Blog: Kansas gets wind farm, BP gets tax credit — just in time
Kansas is to wind as Saudi Arabia is to oil. So it makes sense that energy conglomerate BP recently announced plans to build an $800-million, 262-turbine wind farm in the southern part of the state…
The move comes just in time to take advantage of a stimulus-funded federal tax credit that’s set to expire next year…
BP’s job-creating project — as it has been touted by state officials — will take advantage of an expiring provision that had previously been extended by President Obama’s politically unpopular 2009 stimulus.
The provision offers either a 10-year, 2.2-cent production tax credit for every kilowatt-hour generated, or a onetime 30% investment tax credit paid to companies starting wind projects before 2012 and finishing before 2013 — two deadlines that the BP project exactly meets…
BP will also pay more than $1 million a year for 20 years to the 200 landowners where the turbines will be built, according to a report from The Wichita Eagle, plus another annual $1 million to local governments.
And the company has signed a long-term deal to sell three-quarters of its energy to Associated Electric Cooperative in southwest Missouri, which has 875,000 customers. Its owner cited the imminent expiration of the production tax credit as part of the reason for buying energy from BP now…
The investment tax credit for new wind projects has been popular too: It has awarded more than $8.4 billion in renewable-energy tax credits since 2009, with roughly $6.7 billion going toward wind projects alone, according to U.S. Treasury award data.
The American Wind Energy Assn. has said that continuing uncertainty about whether the credit will continue beyond 2012 has already led to layoffs in what has been a boom industry: The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimated in a Sept. 23 report that nearly 400 U.S. manufacturers produced turbine products in 2010, up from 30 in 2004…http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/kansas-gets-wind-farm-bp-gets-tax-credit-just-in-time.html

only SMH and Sky so far carrying this AAP report from a CLOSED-DOOR meeting at the jobs forum. GE might like to be on the proposed council! my initial thought is why is GE even at the forum?

6 Oct: SMH: AAP: Paul Osborne: GE calls for clean energy jobs council
The federal government should drive job creation in the clean energy sector with a new body to help co-ordinate skills, education, industry and immigration policy, the jobs forum has been told.
In a closed session at the forum in Canberra, GE Energy’s Tim Rourke proposed setting up a Clean Energy Jobs and Innovation Council to advise the government…
Mr Rourke said the passing of the government’s carbon pricing legislation alone would not secure a clean energy economy.
“Nor will it be achieved with the commencement of a carbon price from July next year or the initiation of an ETS (emissions trading scheme) in 2015 – even though these things must be done,” he said.
“It will only be secured with the ongoing engagement of businesses and stakeholders from across the economy and across the community with governments to pull all the policy levers to make it happen.
“A price on carbon is critical. The Renewable Energy Target is critical … but the government has more policy levers such as skills and training, education, trade, infrastructure and tax policy.”.
Mr Rourke said immigration policy was also important, especially in terms of bringing in trainers from overseas to teach Australians high-skill tasks.
He told AAP he sensed from the session – which Prime Minister Julia Gillard attended – that there was goodwill within the government for such a body…http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/ge-calls-for-clean-energy-jobs-council-20111006-1lb8w.html

5 Oct: GigaOM: Katie Fehrenbacher: 5 bets the DOE made that are better than Solyndra
2. BrightSource’s Ivanpah solar farm. Solar thermal company BrightSource is one of the first companies in the world to start building a massive solar power tower farm. BrightSource’s Ivanpah is now under construction on 3,600 acres of land in the desert near Las Vegas…
Ivanpah will be built with a $1.6 billion loan, guaranteed by the DOE and funded by the Federal Financing Bank…
Private investors in the project include NRG Energy, Bechtel and Google, and funders of BrightSource include VantagePoint Capital, Alstom, Morgan Stanley, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Chevron Technology Ventures…http://gigaom.com/cleantech/5-better-bets-by-the-doe-than-solyndra/

19 Sept: Forbes: More False Hope About Renewable Energies That Consumers Reject
by Robert L. Bradley Jr., CEO & Founder of the Institute for Energy Research and author of Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies
Don’t be fooled by the political hype. Alternative energy sources fail the cost, reliability, and scalability tests. Whether it is ethanol for transportation or wind and solar for electricity, politically correct energies are an economic drain…
The problem concerns the vicissitudes of weather, which makes wind and solar inherently unreliable and unsuitable for today’s energy-intensive economy.
Wind turbines produce at maximum capacity during a range of wind speeds — typically 30 to 55 mph. At slower speeds, electrical output falls dramatically. If wind speeds fall by half, production decreases by a factor of eight.
Therefore, turbines scarcely produce at capacity. In fact, the annual output of a turbine averages just 20% to 30% of capacity. And about 10% to 15% of the time, these turbines produce virtually no power at all…
Given the economic realities, the only thing that has kept these initiatives afloat is government coddling. Direct spending, tax breaks and research funding pushed renewable-energy subsides to $14.7 billion in 2010 — a 186% increase since 2007.
Even with this largess, wind power made up just 0.9% of total energy supply last year. Many of the industry’s government incentives are set to expire over the next few years, so little more can be expected from the failed experiment in “green” power…http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2011/09/19/more-false-hope-about-renewable-energies-that-consumers-reject/

7 Oct: AFP: Cloud hangs over climate finance
PANAMA CITY — An impasse in global climate talks is casting a shadow on clean energy financing in the developing world, with growing doubts over a program that has funded billions of dollars in projects…
A signature feature of Kyoto is the Clean Development Mechanism — or CDM in the talks’ jargon — which allows countries to meet their obligations by financing environmentally friendly projects in the developing world.
The European Union has supported a new round of Kyoto commitments after 2012 to avoid any gap, but other advanced economies have balked. Ramping up the pressure, developing countries have warned they would not support a continuation of the CDM without further commitments by rich nations.
“My hunch is that without having a second commitment period, there is no future for the CDM at this moment,” said Naoyuki Yamagishi, who is following the issue for the environmental group WWF…
The World Bank has also urged greater clarity. In a recent study, the global lender warned that billions of dollars in private investment were at risk due to the doubts over the future.
Transactions in the CDM market have stagnated and amounted to $1.5 billion last year, less than in 2005 when the Kyoto Protocol took effect, according to the World Bank study.
The CDM has also proven attractive to investors, particularly in Europe, by creating a new unit — Carbon Emission Reductions — that can be put up as collateral and is not subject to whims such as currency rates…
Adding to the controversy, Japan, with the support of India, has pressed in Panama City for the CDM to be expanded to cover nuclear energy projects.
“The CDM should be flexible and maximize possible technological contributions to sustainable development,” Japanese trade ministry official Soichiro Seki said, calling for “technical neutrality.”
Japan has long pushed to promote exports of its technology including nuclear power, which has come under increasing scrutiny after the Fukushima crisis following the March 11 tsunami.
Still, the WWF’s Yamagishi said it was critical to avoid a lapse into a system of bilateral arrangements on climate financing that lack supervision. “We definitely prefer a multinational system because it has rules,” he said.http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gvvXopTkJLWq2T-dZ7HlppTVLV9A?docId=CNG.c05571d1da8b533f5fbbc6407b4da20d.f11

6 Oct: AFP: Climate talks eye revenue from shipping
With nations facing gaping shortfalls meeting pledges on climate change, several governments and activist groups are pushing to put a price on shipping emissions to fund aid to poor countries…
Germany has spearheaded the idea of setting a price on shipping emissions and devoting proceeds to the new Green Climate Fund, which aims to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 in aid to low-lying islands and other poor nations seen as most vulnerable to climate change.
The money has been in question with top donors Japan, the European Union and the United States all facing internal challenges. Experts say the world is also far off from the UN-enshrined target of limiting warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to prevent climate change’s worst consequences…
The World Bank and IMF, in a research paper submitted last month to Group of 20 finance ministers and obtained by AFP, said that setting a $25 charge per ton of carbon dioxide from aviation and maritime bunker fuels would generate $250 billion in 2020 and reduce each sector’s emissions by five to 10 percent..
But the idea of putting a price on shipping emissions has drawn fire from major emerging economies such as China and India, which are concerned that it would treat vessels from rich and developing nations in the same way…
Shaun Goh, a transport ministry official from Singapore, said that any levy needed to consider that some countries — such as his own — are more dependent on shipping and also ensure that the industry as a whole does not suffer…http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hmwCh5g_ftiiiX8MFJ28hj3hatxg?docId=CNG.62960d81c9574355889ec2e3eeb14bb3.dd1

But the idea of putting a price on shipping emissions has drawn fire from major emerging economies such as China and India, which are concerned that it would treat vessels from rich and developing nations in the same way…
Shaun Goh, a transport ministry official from Singapore, said that any levy needed to consider that some countries — such as his own — are more dependent on shipping and also ensure that the industry as a whole does not suffer…

Funny I think most of the worlds shipping is registered in third world countries.
So the question becomes who pays the levy the shipping companies or the customers that use them.

I have just looked at the final report of the Joint Commitee on Australia’s clean Energy legistation and as I expected they ignored all the submissions they didn’t like. Also a good deal of the report is based on faulty,or no evidence,and fraudulent data with a good measure of lies and half-truths thrown in. Based on the data in the report,couldn’t Jo and some of the other scientists against Climate change take them to court on this issue and challenge them on it? I’m sure that in a court of law,that there pack of lies would be shown as what it is.

Apparently, if you look at the submissions they have published, some are just whatever commenters flung at them. It appears that though they said they would not publish commentary, they are slowly getting onto it. David Evans received the note saying they wouldn’t publish his, then got a note today saying they would. So possibly they will end up publishing many more. (Since my submission went in at 11.55pm WST I expect if they publish mine it will be one of the last…)

Maybe we can come up with some ridiculous articles like the rooling stone one and flood the market?

This might not be as dumb as it sounds. Each year they have a few key points they want to embed in joe publics brain. Only 2 or 3 things each year.

Any communicator will tell you that tryijg to get more than a cople of ideas across at a time will dilute the message in noise.

So lets start our own noise machine and undermine their careful plan for manipulating peopple.

I’ll start off with Global Climate Uncertainty is resulting in increased pressure on the European Unions Financial position.

The increased uncertainty around carbon abatement programmes in Australia is resulting in large swathes of the European Unions financial players questioning whether their clients investments could turn as larger profit as promised. An unnamed GS trader has warned.

“It’s terrible. We’re even wondering if out bonuses will get paid this year” a sourceclose to the top of the food chain in a large institutional investment house has warned.
“Increasing doubts on the australian governments position is meaning we’re not spending as much personally than we normally would” the source was quoted as saying.
“Many large investors are making noises about the promised australian governments ets scheme. They’re wondering if they should pull out”
The situation appears to be compounded by concerns over the GFC and the lack of involvement of larger economies.
This is all happenning in the midst of an anonymous source within the IPCC saying that it appears as though the delayed inset of warming in recent months will result in a much faster acceleration of warming possibly over 10 degrees celsius by 2100.

man, I’ve been reading too much of their drivel haven’t I? You have too. Jump to it, I reckon we could do just as good a job at undermining their unsubstantiated garbage as they do

What, you think the rules they apply to themselves they’ll apply to you? Climategate is a ‘misunderstanding’, but you try it and it will be the Spanish inquisition. Look how flimsy the excuse for the media inquiry was and multiply that by 1000 if they find an actual conspiracy. They have all the resources in the world for any witch hunt they deem necessary to undertake. Besides, don’t we want to stick to the truth? It’s our only hope of winning.

BTW: Does this site have tracebacks? Most sites indicate a link from another site.

REPLY: I do allow trackbacks, though they seem a bit random, some pop up automatically, some don’t. I did see the WUWT link in the dashboard, so I suppose it should have come through as a comment. — JN

I didn’t think it could be improved upon and then it occurred to me that an important and sinister branch is missing. Governments have been pressuring schools, which have been brainwashing children, who then express their fears to their parents, who then feel guilty having sceptic concerns.

A much smaller (I hope) element is the advent of the criminal classes into the carbon trading field. A legal side of it is the developing countries which are keep to keep the carbon offsets rolling. Guilt, guilt, guilt, kerching!

Yeah but the report leaves such statements as yours out of the final result out and I quote “the purpose of the committee is not to re-examine the validity or otherwise of climate scince. The commitee accepts that Global warming is occuring because of human activity. According to the report the fact that Julie Gillard made a promise and then changed her mind is also a “responsible cause of action”

I thought that was one of the points of such a commitee. Basing the report on data that had been proved to be flaty wrong questions the validity of the entire Joint Select Commitee in question.

Interesting verification on how my research has been correct of the composition of our planet at creation and how water has dried up leaving behind salt deposits.
Planet is 4.5 billion years old yet the oldest salt deposits are only a billion in a high elevation. Salt is flammable at high temperatures so it could NOT possibly been expelled by volcanic activity.
Much of our geological plates show exerted down pressure in the way many layers of surface rock formations are bent and not fractured before becoming rock. Many old volcanic rock formations are compressed rock rather than the current surface lava of having trapped gases.
Much of the volcanic activity should be in evidence over billions of years but they only show millions of years. Same with how old our ice at the poles, only in millions of years.
There is so much evidence yet our scientists NEVER considered this as they assumed this planet started as a chemical mess.

How was so much sand created?
At great pressures, volcanic rock being expelled would implode due to any trapped gases would fracture and crush porous rock.
Water also has the ability to transfer energy shock from meteors which leave us with very little evidence of impacts.

I hate to be negative, but 3 whitewash enquiries in Britain came up with the exoneration of (clearly culpable) perpetrators. Why do we still make submissions to a government in Australia with the same global socialist agenda? They already have a predetermined outcome, folks. Sorry about that.

Agreed. In Europe the direct government financing role is greater and more blatant. Friends of the Earth Eutope is, for example, publicly admitted to be very largely funded by the EU and EU governments as well as being an official preferred lobbyist of them. This is ptobably because there are more and bigger governments in Europe and the private Foundation founding sector smaller. As expected FoI always lobby for more big government.

I have asked “envirinmentalists” around the world to name a single solitary scientist anywhere who supports CAGW and is not (like at least 40% of scientists) ultimately funded by government and they have been unable to do so. 2 such scientists did claim the title (well 1 scientist and an anthropologist) but both proved to be lying about their paymaster.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”Henry Louis Mencken…

Don’t forget to add DuPont to the list of industrials. From next generation “Low GWP” refrigerants, to materials for solar panel manufacture to “bio-diesel” and cellulosic ethanol fuels, DuPont has many different irons in the fire to benefit from a Global Warming scare.

According to the Government Accountability Office, between 1993 and 2010 the US government spent $107 Billion on global warming issues, not including tax subsidies, etc. Of this amount, over $31 Billion was in the category of Climate Science. Yet, the US government has failed to produce an independent report, meeting the requirements of the Data Quality Act, which demonstrates that carbon dioxide emissions caused the 20th century warming.
Ken Haapala
Ex. VP SEPP

These are unpleasant reports after 40 years of life under the Bilderberg Sun dogma [1] and secret Kissinger-Mao-Nixon-Breznov agreements [2] to avoid nuclear annihilation by ending the space and nuclear races and uniting nations [See comment #30, 31 above].

Most of us on these posts are suffering from information overload and so when a post arrives with a couple of clearly defined points I find it useful.

Earlier I said that about your explanation of the expanding universe and corresponding implications for galactic and solar factors for climate change.

It seemed to have relevance to showing the very large range of energy factors that impact Earths climate and helps put the small CO2 associated energy budget into perspective.

The science is IN.

The main question now is how do we package and distribute the REAL message about human CO2 and climate change and bring about political change to make our lives more real and grounded in doing the most good for the most people in our communities?

It’s interesting stuff. But it takes no conspiracy to control anyone to explain your items a – e. It takes nothing more than what’s been considered axiomatic in the biological sciences for a long time — if there’s something there to eat there’ll be something there eating it. In other words, if someone will buy it, someone will make it.

The only conspiracy, if it is one, is that the maker wants to keep his clientele. So something bigger, better and more gripping is always ready to offer the buyer when boredom begins to set in.

It gets worse when someone begins to be successful because would-be competitors now want in on the action. To get market share they have to come up with something bigger, better and more gripping than their successful competitor.

Human society has worked this way since there’s been human society. Even without corruption in science there’s competition for recognition. Politics goes the same way. And it’s all downhill from there.

Even AGW needs no conspiracy to explain it. The UN for sure wants power. But what of the rest of the world? Well, there was something there to eat and people stepped right up and began eating it. Of course, once in it up to their ears they stand behind each other for fear of going down in flames.

Every culture has failed and disappeared. But there was no grand conspiracy to control it or destroy it. The human heart is corruptible on its own.

When we were at high school there was a joke that broke out for a few days every year.

Two or three kids would get together and point up apparently at an object in the sky. Every inquisitive newcomer to the group would be drawn for a while to try and find the small object and eventually they would say “there’s nothing there”.

They would them be told the truth and they would then join in trying to see how many we could get to join us.

Dumb but funny.

We found we could get over 10 people — people like groups no matter how dumb the group objective.

The value of science is not only in explaining phenomena, but also in it’s capacity to predict – “the proof is in the pudding”, so to speak. So far the models have failed to do any such thing. As for you, I’ve been seeing your posts for long enough so it’s good to see something of a prediction. I they do create alarmism over what you say, whether it’s true or not, if they use it as an excuse to assert control, then your hypothesis will be vindicated. Are they seeing the writing on the wall with respect to AGW theory? Are they going to use something actual to achieve the same end? Keep a close eye on meetings between global warming after any doomsday announcements.

The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, which saw its budget rise under
President Obama, is now the target of
deep spending cuts by House
Republicans, some of whom want to stop
its regulation of greenhouse gas
emissions……

If the 2012 elections put a Republican majority in both the House and Senate you can look for even more aggressive budget cutting. It’s not out of the question that we could get 2/3 + 1 majorities in both houses which would then leave Obama unable to stop legislation that Republicans want badly enough to override his veto.

In a shocking and historically unprecedented suppression of political expression, four thousand five hundred Australians opposed to the carbon tax have had their submissions to the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Clean Energy Future Legislation rejected out of hand.

Upon its establishment, the Joint Select Committee called for submissions from Australians on the legislation to impose a carbon tax. Despite giving Australians only one week to wade through over 1000 pages of legislation, the Committee Website specifically stated that it “encourages submissions to its inquiry from a wide range of individuals and organisations”. Yet, only 73 submissions, mainly in favour of the carbon tax, were accepted by the committee, with a 4,500 rejected out of hand.

“This is a clear and unequivocal example of the Government sticking its middle finger up to Australians” said Timothy Andrews, Managing Editor of Menzies House. “Thousands of Australians waded through thousands of pages of legislation in the space of just one week to send their detailed submissions to the Joint Committee. Never in the history of the Australian Parliament has such wide-scale rejection of opinions taken place. Never before have submissions been rejected in such a manner. This is hubris of the highest order”

In contrast, the government accepted earlier submissions supporting the carbon tax even if they were simply a two line statement in support, such as Rob Feith’s – which entailed all of “I am writing to express my support for the government to legislate to put a price on carbon. I urge the government to move ahead with the Carbon Tax. Rob Feith”

“This unnecessary and destructive great new tax will cost the Australian economy a staggering $1 trillion dollars by 2050 even under the most optimistic economic modeling” continued Mr. Andrews.“Labor’s extraordinary abuse of the democratic process to deny Australians to have their say about this legislation is offensive to everyone who worked hard to submit their thoughts, and is a pure and utter disgrace”

Children and Young Adults have
been brainwashed into thinking
of CO2 as a poisonous gas, to
ignore its vital role as the
basic gas feed of green plant
photosynthesis, where water is
the basic liquid, and rays of
sunlight the driving energy.
To Lower Earth temperature
would drop airborne moisture,
rains, snow quantities, making
drought and famine our kings.
Is it part of the Exterminate
the Multitude Program? Most
Teachers+Professors are very
complicit whores to CO2 Hate
Lies? The “Science” is cooked:
Earth is very different from
Venus, unlike what Warmers -
many started from NASA paid
Venus Climate Simulations on
the Greenhouse Road – pretend.
Are Gods of Sri Algnoramuse,
and His Ilk, Silicon-based,
anti-Carbon, Artificial Intel
Beings of immense deep power,
to whom Our Elite Traitors
wish to sell Earth at a very
Handsome Profit? We carbon
based life forms may thus
stand in the way of very huge
rewards degree’d elite want?
Let them Eat their Dogturates!

Whilst the majority of posts here are praises at speaking out against climate change, pointing out the flaws etc etc I’m reading this and just getting more frustrated. As a scientist – researching a branch very close to climate change – this whole issue has been completely blown out of proportion. The public want definite answers – yes or no – and journalists (NOT scientists) are thus inclined to give them, but the real issue is that ALL science – research in fact, – deals with observations. We observe things and try to explain them. Climate change is not an “idea” or “concept” or a thought of “explanation” it is an observation. It is something that is seen the world over, measured in Australia, Hawaii, Brazil, Belgium, Russia, Japan etc etc… so to hypothesize that these “observations” are false is plain insanity. Thousands of unrelated, unaquainted scientists from ALL over the world, measuring their thermometers wrong? Really?? No.
As for the whole carbon – climate change link, this is an “explanation”. Its not something that we can measure, hence it is up for debate. BUT statistical analysis, along with (again I emphasize) WORLDWIDE observations of RELATED parameters, lead us to strongly suggest that the two are inextricably linked. The chances of them NOT being linked are similar to the chances of me winning the lottery tomorrow. Yes, there is a miniscule probability, but i’m not going to quit my job and buy a ferari. Similarly, are you willing to take the gamble that carbon and climate are not linked and continue to pollute the atmosphere to oblivion and back? Bearing in mind that that gamble is not just your planet, but everyone’s planet?
In light of the above I find posts like this irresponsible and unresearched. If you investigate something from one side (in this case the skeptical side) you will undoubtedly find the answer you were looking for, not the answer which is actually there.

Claiming to be a scientist “researching a branch very close to climate change”, at 12:58 AM on 9 December Lel writes:

“Similarly, are you willing to take the gamble that carbon and climate are not linked and continue to pollute the atmosphere to oblivion and back? Bearing in mind that that gamble is not just your planet, but everyone’s planet?”

The answer to this precautionary principle crap is simply: “You goddam betcha, putzie.”

Especially when the flaming idiots pushing this “CO2 = global warming” crap refuse even to consider (much less offer) anything resembling relative cost/benefit analyses so that people can compare the putative damages due to anthropogenic global climate change (not that this has yet been proven possible, much less inevitable) against the very real damages done by government extortion and subsidization (“stick” and “carrot”) to our various national economies and individual quality-of-life in order to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

You’re a “scientist,” Lel?

Okay. Make a persuasive case for what you claim to be the “science.”

But you can take your precautionary principle excuse for an argument and ram it briskly back up your own arse.

Climate change is not an “idea” or “concept” or a thought of “explanation” it is an observation. It is something that is seen the world over, measured in Australia, Hawaii, Brazil, Belgium, Russia, Japan etc etc… so to hypothesize that these “observations” are false is plain insanity.

Well just hold on a darn cotton pickin’ cockamamie minute there Mr/Ms Scientist “closely related to climate”.

Who said climate change isn’t observed? Who claims climate doesn’t change? Who needed billions of dollars to assert what we already knew since Adam was a boy? It certainly wasn’t sceptics now was it “closely related to climate” Scientist?

As a Scientist “closely related to climate”, are you happy with the 2 keepers of the most important climate data (global temperatures) who are both confessed environmental activists?

Are you a dispassionate researcher in your “closely related to climate” field? If so, are you happy with the inordinate amount of influence wielded by environmental activists such as WWF and Greenpeace on the science “closely related” to your field?

Do you believe that because somebody attains a PhD, they are no longer susceptible to the usual human failings?
Would you like me to name a few Doctors who have been jailed and or disgraced, to prove my point? Is that really necessary? Have you been under a rock for the last few decades? (maybe you’re a geologist)

“the flaming idiots pushing “CO2=global-warming” crap” ?? Because you know so much better? Then please enlighten us as to what it is causing global warming, if not CO2? From your vast and extensive knowledge of atmospheric and oceanic science, please explain to us why global temperatures are now 1 degree warmer than before the industrial revolution(Hansen et al. 2006, PNAS; Cox et al., 2000, Nature)? Why is sea-ice cover in the Arctic 37% lower that 30 years ago (Comiso et al. 200, Geophysical Res letters)? Why is ocean pH now 0.1 units below that at pre-industrial times(Orr et al., 2005, Nature; Zeebe et al. 2008, Nature)? (and note these references are not even 0.01% of the findings related to climate change).

Science = ‘the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.’ That is what we do. Period. Cost/benefit analysis? Talk to an economist or sociologist. Government corruption? we can’t control how people USE the data, but to just deny its existence is convenient, lazy and ignorant, which is exactly what i suggest you are. Thats fine, but don’t harp on about ‘global warming crap’ or ‘CO2 rubbish’ etc etc, when compared to the people working in the field, you know shit.

At 7:03 AM on 10 December, this Lel specimen objected to his crap being called “crap,” whining:

“Because you know so much better? Then please enlighten us as to what it is causing global warming, if not CO2?”

Well, there’s the fact that this whacking big ball of fusing hydrogen one astronomical unit away, decidedly varying in its functions and output over time, has a boatload more to do with the current rebound our world has been experiencing since the Little Ice Age began to abate circa 1700 (and finally came to an end, more or less, in about 1850).

There’s also the fact that the global climate temperature averages ceased their warming trend in 1998 in spite of the way the Keeling curve has continued its upward acceleration throughout the interval since that year.

If Lel‘s “CO2 rubbish” (including los warmistas’ psychotic thought-blocking when it comes to the effects of variances in insolation) were anything but purest crap, causation would be demonstrated in correlation, and it’s not.

I would recommend to this Lel critter who’s supposed to be a scientist “researching a branch very close to climate change” that he/she take a quick look at the Climategate timeline very kindly maintained by Ms. Nova on this Web site to trace the roots of this preposterous bogosity back as far as the idiocies of one flaming schmuck named Hansen, who in 1976 co-authored an article in Science titled “Greenhouse effects due to man-made perturbations of trace gases” and stated that:

Hansen predicated his “We’re All Gonna Die!” condemnation of anthropogenic CO2 on the basis of his studies of Venus, projecting what is thought to have happened on that planet several billion years ago in order to fantasize about what could happen in the next few decades – Real Soon Now! – on the planet Earth.

As with our Lel today, “stupid is as stupid does.”

Science, Lel, is actually an intellectually honest and methodologically rigorous “activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”

Wow, to all the “closely related to climate” and “scientist” references in quotations, I’m happy to see your cynicism is not limited to climate change.
To reply as thoroughly as possible, I’ll try to respond in order of posts, so firstly – @Baa Humbug
I’m glad we can agree that global warming is happening. Firstly, in response to “are you happy with the 2 keepers of the most important climate data (global temperatures) who are both confessed environmental activists?”
how are you classifying “most important climate data”? Global temperature data – as the word suggests – is not one data set – it is numerous data sets obtained around the world, and each individual meteorological station from norway to south africa does not submit their data to two people. What an insane notion!?? ANd secondly, due to the relatively short time period of direct global temperature data (humans have only been taking direct measurements for past 200 years) a large amount of temperature data is obtained from tree rings, coral growth, ice cores and other proxies. So I would also argue that global temperature is not the most important data.
Secondly, “inordinate amount of influence wielded by environmental activists”? Don’t know how to break this to you, but they wield little to no influence. I don’t know how you imagine they “wield” any influence?! Our money is government funding. Period. Published results are peer-reviewed by other experts in the field. Period. Unless 90% or more climate scientists were members and in a conspiracy to back each others research, to push it through to publication? Which is beyond paranoid!?! Every new PhD coming to work in the field would be initiated into the secret “climate covenant”?? Seriously!?? Scientists are of course susceptible to human failings, and that is why there are such rigorous screening processes in place for every piece of research that gets published. Thats not to say that occasionally people are wrong, but to suggest that climate scientists are wrong, you’re discrediting thousands of people’s work. Disgraced/jailed doctors are in the vast minority, so lets stop with the crazy conspiracies.

To Mark D, I grant you the correlation/causation argument, however firstly lets agree that the correlation is there. Start reading Petit et al. 1999 (Nature) to establish this. Then look at the increasing temp. records from 1780 and the simultaneously increasing CO2 records. Correlation still there. Then, to briefly digress, 1891, Swedish Scientist Svante Arrhenius (Nobel Prize laureate) working with colleague in Amsterdam Van ‘t Hoff – also Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry) calculated the natural greenhouse effect of CO2 – finding that only 55-62% of CO2 in the air (at his time this was 280ppm, not the current 380) would result in global temperature being ~5 degrees lower. Note this was before the idea of global warming and before we even knew CO2 in the atmosphere was increasing – hence an unbiased, fundamental, thermodynamic calculation. Skip 100 years later, and this is what they find in Vostock ice records spanning back 420000 years. Inter-glacial to glacial periods show CO2 fluctuations of 180 – 300ppm, with temperature swings of 8 degrees. (would also like to point out that current CO2 conc of ~380ppm are unprecedented in past 420,000 years).

So your first line of defence would be, coincidence? Thats a fricking HUGE coincidence. Or following the causation argument – global temp caused the increase in CO2? How? I guess you (and Tucci78) would then argue the sun? or “whacking big ball of fusing hydrogen” as you so eloquently put it? Unfortunately, insolation/radiation etc can (and is) measured (hence the discovery and well established sun-spot cycle and other variations), as can short-wave and long-wave radiation, and as such the possibility of ‘change in solar activity’ can be ruled out. Natural global cycles (Milankovich Cycles) are seen in the records and observations and hence accounted for. So while yes, natural temperature variation occurs, it is not what has caused the warming in the past 200 years.

So if you are still a skeptic I can only surmise that you think that
a) ice core records are wrong? misinterpreted? the world round (vast majority coming from Antarctica and Greenland – and being analysed by different groups and all finding the same correlations – hence it must be a really fundamental mistake! And not just in one branch, as numerous proxies and isotope fractionations are used, and all show the same thing).
b) you think that the observed global temperature increase (if not caused by CO2, and not caused by solar variations or the earth’s orbit – as we have ruled out, hence… it can only be the earth’s core which periodically, emits more heat? any other theories?) is causing the CO2 increase, which we observe. For which there is no reason, as increasing temperature increases photosynthetic activity in plants and hence should lead to less CO2…?

As for the climategate timeline – its all journalistic publications?!!! Go the science periodicals and there is significantly LESS variation!!!
One last comment to Mark D – “stop standing on authority”? Why? Isn’t that what we all do when we go to the doctor, the dentist, the mechanic? etc etc? Why is it different for science? By all means get a second/third/fourth opinion, but what is the argument for NOT listening to people whom know more about it than us?

I attended a Business Forum of the ICAA at which a representative of one of the Big 4 accountancy firms gave a one hour presentation relating to the carbon tax and carbon pollution.

At the end of his presentation, I congratulated him on his presentation, but then asked him how he had been able to make a one hour presentation without once ever mentioning two vital words, which, after all, represent what it is all about… CARBON DIOXIDE.

I also asked why he always referred to carbon pollution rather than carbon dioxide pollution, and why he believed carbon dioxide was pollution when clearly it is not and not even the IPCC AR4 refers to carbon dioxide as pollution.

His answer surprised me when he stated that his firm uses the word carbon on a colloquial basis. I reminded him that he is from a top international accountancy firm, which is part of our profession… that deals only in specifics and precise terminology and never in ambiguity and colloquialism. I got a round of applause.

It told me that this Big 4 accountancy firm is in it for one reason… the enormous amounts of money it stands to gain by being engaged in this great global warming swindle.

This is what happens when technology is sold to pigs with power. The HAARP weather modification and earthquake project, as well as intentionally trying three times before successfully blowing out the high pressure reservoir at the Maconda Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the cessation of the Loop Current are two examples. You Europeans love the queen lizard so much, keep her warm. You used to do that to people, remember?

Add to that the conga-line of environmental consultants who are required to produce reports for development applications.
Recent example, $1000 cost added to a development application to tell me there are no koalas on an 800 sm cleared suburban block of land. This takes no more than a hour to do.

The ‘Global Warming’, ‘Climate Change’, Fukushima, DH oil well blow out responsible for freezing Europe through current destruction, Fukushima(to destroy the Japanese economy and people) and the changes to permit the looting of the American economy all emanate from regimented forces loyal to England as the Skull and Bones Society(since 1713 or earlier) and freemasonry. Freemasonry’s “Grand Patron” is the queen of England. Freemasons are dedicated to the U.S. overthrow by definition, like “Rhodes Scholars”. Homework.Truth. Do it. Learn it. Believe it. Follow it.

[...] To answer your question Sanjeev, Dr David Evans is a world leading carbon modeler with six higher degrees in maths and stats, three from Stanford. He duxed Sydney Uni engineering, is doing maths research, spent 5 years at the Australian Greenhouse office and makes it possible for his wife to spend far too long on a computer in a quest to stop cheats and parasites from getting away with a rort. (Can’t everyone see the billions of dollars circling through this “crisis”?) [...]

[...] exposed with naked conflicts of interest. Where was The BBC? Another cycle of the Climate Change Scare Machine is laid bare. David Rose explains how those lobbying and advising the government on green [...]